How to Motivate Your Employees at Work

Here’s the situation: You’ve hired people with the required backgrounds and proven track records of success.

You have your dream team in place. They started strong – giving new ideas and creative suggestions. But after some time you started noticing an overall lack of creativity. Your employees stopped putting all their effort into their work.

So, what’s the matter? The answer is simple – your employees are not motivated.

It is important to remember that employees won’t always be as motivated as employers or managers to work harder each day to contribute to the success of the company. They always need something that will push them to work better.

If this situation sounds familiar, then you are in the right place. Sometimes even the best employers and managers struggle to find creative and reliable strategies for employee motivation. You need employee motivation in order to contribute to your company culture and to help take your business to the next level.

Here are some tips on how to motivate employees to elevate their performance to optimal levels and increase overall work motivation.

Give your employees autonomy

Managers may consider micromanagement a way to ensure that tasks are performed in a very precise manner. But this type of management has a negative connotation because it shows a lack of freedom in the workplace.

Employees that adapt to this style of management are usually unable to make any independent decisions. Others react differently to micromanagement: some do anything possible to try to earn the trust they feel they are being denied; some will become dependent on the manager and won’t dare make a move without approval; others resist by arguing and generally trying to be unpleasant back.
It is highly essential to give them some autonomy. We all want to feel in control of our time and energy. This will demonstrate that you trust your employees which will help form an emotional bond with them.
Autonomy is one of the most important motivators. Team motivation comes from creating their own process and showing their employer how to work with them.

Create an awesome work environment

A positive work environment makes employees feel good about coming to the office and this provides the motivation that keeps them engaged throughout the day.
Try to create an atmosphere where your staff will feel like they are home. More and more offices have already started adapting this technique.
Here are the ingredients for happy employees in the office – colorful ottomans and comfortable chairs; snacks including candy, coffee and fruit; games for breaks; and healthy communication.
It definitely makes sense to invest in a work environment where people actually want to spend their time.

Recognition for hard work

Rewards are necessary for employee satisfaction. This encourages certain behaviors in people and is known as “positive reinforcement under operant conditioning” in the field of psychology. Nowadays, it is widely used by managers as well: By rewarding employees who put in the effort for their work, you contribute to their motivation for working hard in the future as well.
Choose a way which seems convenient to you – encourage your employees with bonuses, take your team to a unique restaurant or pool, give them some days off, celebrate the success of your employees with a bottle of champagne or treats in the office. All these factors have a big influence on employee motivation.
You can also run polls to choose “the best worker of the month.” Just ask your employees to vote anonymously with their mobile phones to find out who is the most productive worker in their opinion and reward them accordingly.